How To Get Windows To Chime On The Hour

Alarms and reminders a good way to keep track of something you need to do. When you’re swamped with work, these alarms and reminders are sometimes the only way to keep track of an approaching deadline. You can set alarms to recur every hour on your phone. Desktops aren’t really big on alarms even though Windows 10 has an alarm and clock app. The alarm app is basic as though you were going to use it to wake up in the morning. It even has a snooze feature. It doesn’t do much else. If you need a better way to keep track of time while you’re working, you can get Windows to chime on the hour. Clocks, real ones, actually do that. It’s a good way to remind you of the passing time if you get caught up with work.

To get Windows to chime on the hour, you’re going to need two things; an app or script to run a chime sound for you, and a way to get it to run every hour. We’re gong to go with a script to execute the chime sound. You need to find a sound file though that will give you a chime. You can use sounds already on Windows, or you can download stock sounds that are free.

Chime Sound Script

First things first, download a nice short sound to play on the hour. We’re going with a little bell sound but you can go with a siren or a fog horn if you want. Save the file someplace you’re unlikely to delete it. Give it a simple name.

Replace the line “C:WindowsMediaAlarm01.wav” with the path to the sound you just downloaded. You can use WAV or MP3 files.

Save the file with a VBS extension. For example, save it as HourlyChime.vbs. This script comes courtesy of Superuser user Richard.

Create A Scheduled Task

The script runs the audio file. That is its sole purpose. You now need to run the script every hour. To do this, you need to create a scheduled task. Open Task Scheduler and click ‘Create task’ in the right column.

Give the task a name and then go to the Triggers tab.

On the Triggers tab, leave the ‘Begin the task’ dropdown set to ‘On a schedule’. In the Settings section, set the Start date to the current date. Set the time to 12:00:00AM. It should recur daily.

Under the Advanced Settings section, enable the ‘Repeat Task Every’ option and select ‘1 Hour’ from the dropdown. Click Ok.

Now, all you need to do is call the script. Go to the Actions tab. Add a new action. Click the ‘Browse’ button next to the Program/Script field and select the VBS file you created in the previous section. Click Ok, and add your task is done.

This task will make Windows chime every hour. You can turn it off whenever you want.

About Kelli Smith

Kelli runs customer support and creates content for Skillcrush, a digital skills training and education platform with friendly instructors, an active student community, and laser focus on helping you achieve your career goals with technology. She has an MBA and successfully ran an international company and her own freelancing business before pursuing her passion for tech by taking advanced web development classes. Kelli loves listening to tech podcasts at 2x speed, looking for cute Corgi photos online and teaching and performing country line dancing—as a true Texan living in Finland would do. Say hi on Twitter.

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